Pandemic heightens challenges for working mothers
Pre-pandemic, when Katelyn Scammon decided to return to work after years of staying home to raise her children, she had a hard enough time finding a job.
Interviews seemed to falter when potential employers realized she was a mother to four school-aged children, Scammon said, muddled by a stigma many women face: That their focus will be split between work and home.
But Scammon was determined. And in September 2019, she started as a paralegal in a law office specializing in estate planning. In April, she switched to a similar work-from-home position for a private attorney.
And then the coronavirus pandemic hit.
As it worsened, so did the company’s finances and Scammon was laid off in July.
She was already struggling to fulfill her work hours alongside the pandemic that sent her kids – Brayden, 12; Rylan, 10; Delaney, 9; and Donovan, 6 – learning remotely from their North Attleboro home. So in when she was laid off, there was no question of where Scammon was needed most: She would stay home.
But she wonders how it will affect women in the workforce.
“I bet in the future, there’s always going to be a worry about, what if everything happens again?” Scammon, 40, said. “It typically falls on mom. I already had trouble getting a job being a mom of four kids. If you add the pandemic on top of that, I can’t imagine it making things any easier.”
Beth Fleming found her work hours altered twice because of the pandemic.
The 32-year-old emergency room nurse was pregnant when coronavirus hit. Unsure how it affected pregnancies, Fleming moved to a different unit with less exposure.
As a result, her hours became less reliable.
Before the pandemic, Fleming worked two 8-hour evening shifts a week. After it struck, she was picking up day shifts or working 12 hours to accommodate staffing and earn her keep. It was only possible because her husband was sent home to work.
A second reduction in hours came once her son was born.
Before the pandemic, the Flemings had help. Her mother-in-law watched the children once a week, and Fleming’s parents moved closer so they could also help out as needed.
But the pandemic required vigilance. Both Fleming’s mother and mother-in-law also work as nurses at different hospitals, with different levels of exposure to the virus. To mix those felt irresponsible, and the couple also wanted to respect their parents’ health.
Still, it wasn’t easy. The baby, Reese, now 6 months, came prematurely and spent two months in the newborn intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Fleming spent her days caring for her two children, Rory, 5; and Reid, 2, before rushing back to her new son in Boston once her husband, now back in the office, got home from work.
“Not having my parents, my mother-in-law, all of the other people we would normally rely on available was challenging,” she said.
Even now, after returning to work, Fleming can only manage one 12-hour shift among her family’s needs.
Leslie Luyo was looking for a new start.
After losing her job as a mortgage loan officer the previous fall, Luyo started a certificate program in bookkeeping on Feb. 22 – just weeks before the pandemic rattled the country into lockdown.
Leslie Luyo of Norton works at her in-home bookkeeping business while keeping an eye on her children, Felix-Adrian, 11; and Isabella, 5, while her husband, Feilx, works from home. “I just started and I’m not bringing home income yet – not enough to be considered full-time,” she said. “We need to make sure he takes care of his job, so he doesn’t get laid off. It’s like back in the day, when dad went to work and mom stayed home. I do feel like in a sense we’re going backward a little bit.”
But with her two children, Felix-Adrian, 11, and Isabella, 5, and husband Felix soon home full time, her education was put on the backburner.
Luyo stole time to study in the evenings, but the fivemonth program took almost double that. She finished in October, but finding work was impossible when the needs at home were still rampant.
Instead, Luyo, 38, started her own bookkeeping business out of her Norton home, where she sets her own hours.
It’s slow to start. She works in 15-minute spurts between child care and remote learning or a few hours in the evenings and on the days her kids attend school in-person.
“I don’t think I would’ve gone for opening my own business if it wasn’t for the need,” she said. “Even on the days they go to school, my daughter is back by 2 p.m. When would I work? 9-1? Their schedules are not set up for two parents to work an 8-5. I don’t believe I could go back to that at this point.”
A common theme
In a world turned upside down by the pandemic, several studies show a common theme: Women are taking the biggest hit, both economically and socially.
In April, as early pandemic layoffs totaled 700,000 jobs lost, an analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that nearly 60% were positions held by women.
In September, as schools nationwide reopened only partially in-person (or not at all), the U.S. Department of Labor reported 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce – more than four times the number of men, at 216,000.
Women held just over half of all payroll jobs at the end of 2019 for only the second time in history.
Now, research by McKinsey Women in the Workplace found one in three women are considering leaving or downshifting their careers because of the pandemic.
A majority of those women say it’s because of child care responsibilities.
And the rest of the group’s research backs those claims.
The study found that, with supports like daycare and schooling upended this year, mothers are more than three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for most of the housework and caregiving during the pandemic.
About 40% of mothers said they spend at least three hours a day more than they did pre-pandemic meeting household responsibilities.
And working mothers are twice as likely as fathers to worry that their caregiving responsibilities will result in negative judgments of their work performance.
Even before the pandemic, the study found women in senior-level jobs felt they needed to work harder and longer than their male colleagues. During the pandemic, 47% of those women said they feel pressure to be “always on” and 54% said they consistently feel exhausted.
Pre-pandemic, women and men left their jobs at comparable rates. Now, a tipped scale leaves room for gender inequities in the workplace, especially in leadership positions – and could have lasting consequences.
Effects could be far reaching
Brenda Wyss, a professor of economics who teaches a course on women in the workforce at Wheaton College, said the effects could be far-reaching.
At the most basic level, Wyss said women leaving the workforce equates to a loss of perspective, ingenuity and creativity in every industry.
But it also has consequences financially and professionally, both at the personal and societal level.
The gender wage gap, which estimates on average a woman earns 80% of a man’s salary for the same work (and less than that for women of color), is often attributed to differences in experience or the number of collective hours worked.
And even in an economy disrupted by the pandemic, those hours and experiences still count.
“Even if I cut my hours this year, or leave the labor force for half a year, the implication is that it’s not only a loss this year, but going forward,” the economics professor said.
Women who alter their participation in the workforce during the pandemic risk losing access to promotions and might return to positions where they are under-utilized. Security assets like retirement and social security, which draw from long-term earnings, also come into question.
An analysis from the Center for American Progress found that working mothers have reduced their work hours at rates four to five times greater than working fathers.
The McKinsey study found that one in four women in leadership positions were considering leaving their jobs this year, which could create a ripple effect across the population. Female leaders pull other women up, Wyss said. They act as role models, offer mentorship and diversify hiring decisions.
And it’s the women currently kicking off their careers that she is the most worried about: Research has shown that individuals who start their career during recessions see a hit in their overall earnings and ability to advance throughout the rest of their career.
And thus, the gender wage gap widens – for individuals personally, but also as a whole.
Wyss believes the pandemic has also heightened gender division at home as families were forced to decide who would pick up the extra household responsibilities.
Because women tend to earn less than men, for some families it made more sense that women’s jobs were first on the line. But Wyss also believes this could be an opportunity to renegotiate those responsibilities among partners now that many people are working from home.
She also wonders if this will shift the design of the labor force as a whole.
Because gains over the last 20 years have been slow, some worry that any decrease in the female labor force this year will set back progress decades.
But Wyss sees an opportunity to reevaluate how the workforce is designed.
“It’s hard to see change in women’s participation without any change in the structure of the labor force and more support for parents,” Wyss said. “We don’t have labor force conditions that make it easy to combine child care and employment. But maybe this will be one of those watershed moments where we see gender norms change that.”